480 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST, 



to hide them from himself, had he not possessed higher 

 resources. Even his best friends were sometimes dis- 

 appointed and pained by this want of emotive utter- 

 ance, except when he was much moved. James Black, 

 between whom and John though radically dissimilar in 

 many respects there existed a true and lasting friendship, 

 and whose warmth of nature is a dominant characteristic, 

 used to feel pained by this chilliness of outward manner 

 in meeting him. " He never," he complains, " came spon- 

 taneously forward to shake hands. I had every time to lay 

 hold of his and do all the pressing and shaking, while he 

 neither aided nor resisted. And such hands ! So stout, so 

 rough, so gnarled, so funnily put together ! Warm, clean, 

 and dry, but otherwise as lifeless and meaningless to the 

 feeling as a small bunch of early horn carrots ! Had they 

 been flowers and his digits petals, John would have de- 

 scribed his thumbs as reflex. His fingers seemed to have 

 no tips ; whatever he laid hold of, he grasped far back 

 towards his palm. I have felt," he continues, " hands that 

 pressed warmly, hands that throbbed and quivered as if 

 they would impart some thought or wish unspoken for 

 there are persons, like Adam Bell, in whom every hair seems 

 alive, but John Duncan seemed, in saluting, to be pre- 

 occupied as far as his feelings were concerned, and to look 

 on the transaction as an unmeaning ceremony. He did 

 not even say ' Good-bye ' in parting, but only a simple, 

 careless-seeming ' 'bye.' " 



Yet with all this apparent outward callousness, his 

 feelings were truly deep and strong. They rose on 

 occasions to the poetic, as when he was silently and electri- 

 cally beatified on meeting Charles Black for the last time ; 



